Sunday, 15 November 2015

On Monday 23 November, the next seminar in the autumn term LSHG seminar series at the Institute of Historical Research (5.30pm, Room 304, 3rd floor) is Sue Jones on the long awaited subject of pirates:

'My longing desire to go to sea': wanderlust and wayward youth in early modern England'

Some advance notice. On Saturday 30th April 2016 at the IHR the LSHG will be running an event to mark the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising

The period from 1910 to 1939 was one of the most explosive inBritish working class history.Them and Us looks at how the class struggle—embracingthe struggles of women workers, immigrant workers, theunemployed and the fight against fascism—was fought inthese years.

The Labour Party and trade union leaderships were key players in the conflict, but their actions were often intended to undermine working class struggle. The ruling class had much to thank them for.

Today when the working class is under a sustained and unprecedented attack from the Tories, Them and Us is an essential reminder of how past struggles were fought, of the unscrupulous nature of our enemy and of the need for militancy and solidarity to defeat them. John Newsinger draws on the words and actions of working class activists—and of their enemies—to bring to life key episodes in the struggle.

Friday, 6 November 2015

The two volumes of Marxism and Historical Practice bring together essays written by one of the major Marxist historians of the last fifty years. The pieces collected in Volume I, Interpretive Essays on Class Formation and Class Struggle, offer a stimulating, empirically grounded survey of North American collective behaviour, popular mobilizations, and social struggles, ranging from a rich discussion of ritualistic protest like the charivari through the rise of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s to campaigns against neoliberal labour reform in British Columbia in the early 1980s. What emerges is Palmer's sustained reflection on long-standing interpretive historical problems of class formation, the dynamics of social change, and how popular social movements arise and relate to law, the state, and existing cultural contexts.

Tuesday, 3 November 2015

Labour history was central to many constructions of radical history in Britain in the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, however, the decline in the strength of the British trade union movement alongside intellectual trends away from the centrality of class have coincided with an apparent 'crisis' of labour history. Yet trade unions still have 6 million members in this country, work is still a central experience of everyday life, and antagonism at the point of production must still have a role in radical politics. But what place does recounting the experience of labour in the past have to play in this process? This session will bring together people who have engaged with the history of labour and trade unions from a variety of approaches to engage with this question.

Clara Zetkin played a prominent role within the left wing of the German Social-Democratic Party and subsequently within the Communist Party of Germany and the Communist International, with a strong interest in the rights of working-class women. The latest edition of Revolutionary History, edited by Mike Jones and Ben Lewis, brings together articles and letters by Zetkin on such subjects as revisionism within the SPD, women’s rights and feminism, the fight against fascism, and the bureaucratisation of the Communist International, together with scholarly articles focusing upon specific aspects of Zetkin’s political life. This edition of Revolutionary History will bring the life and work of Clara Zetkin to the notice of today’s left-wing activists and historians, and help to restore her name to its rightful position within the pantheon of twentieth-century revolutionary Marxists. Articles by Clara Zetkin
 The Servant Girls’ Movement
 Against the Theory and Tactics of Social Democracy
 Guidelines for the Communist Women’s Movement
 Letters to Lenin
 The Struggle Against Fascism
 The Bourgeois Women’s Movement
 Letter to the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU
 Speech to the ECCI
 Letters to Fanny Jezierska
 Letter to Wilhelm Pieck
 Opening Speech of the Reichstag as its Oldest Member, 30 August 1932 Articles about Clara Zetkin
 Gisela Notz, Clara Zetkin and the International Socialist Women’s Movement
 Ottokar Luban, Clara Zetkin’s Influence on the Spartacus Group, 1918-1919
 Günter Wernicke, Clara Zetkin’s Opposition to Sidelining of Comrades in the Comintern and KPD in the Mid-1920s
 Horst Helas, Clara Zetkin’s ‘Filthy Letter’